What should your Manager Stop Doing?

“What would a woman shop if given a big bill voucher?”, Amazon recently conducted this social experiment #WhenaWomanShops. Husbands were separately asked, “What would the wife buy?”  Like usual, the husbands anticipated the wife to buy cosmetics, footwear or apparel for herself. However, the wives went on to shop for their husband breaking the big-time stereotype of women being self-indulgent when it comes to shopping! What a  perception gap about women and shopping!

We did something similar last week on “What should your manager stop doing?”, the most popular question on Jombay’s 360 degree Feedback Platform. Our technical team ran a software program to find the most common answers to this question (in an encrypted fashion, without revealing the identity of the person). It brought out some of the most amazing things that many subordinates would want their managers to stop doing:

• Stop being serious all the time, be more expressive
• Stop sugar-coating feedback from the customers
• Stop CCing us on too many emails
• Stop being a pushover, be more assertive
• Stop being too much customer-centric
• Stop imposing ideas

And some other answers that were not as common, but were frequent enough:

• Stop Smoking
• Stop being humble; take the credit of the success when you deserve it
• Stop acting like a parent
• Stop being too calm in complex situations; it comes across that you don’t understand the gravity of the situation

Many managers develop cold feet during a 360 degree feedback exercise. There’s a stereotype in their mind that their subordinates don’t care enough, are not smart enough to point areas of improvement, and will just vent out complaints. The reality seems to be quite different. It is heartening to see how subordinates care for the manager and how much they want their manager to win!

Perception gaps! For good or for bad, it is important to identify them!

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